David Person: Stop selling prison cells to the highest bidder

6:51 PM,
Mar. 20, 2014

Column

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David Person

Our nation is numb, President Obama said this month while announcing his My Brother's Keeper initiative. So numb that we are nonchalant about the overwhelming numbers of black and brown boys who end up in prison. "We just assume this is an inevitable part of American life, instead of the outrage that it is," Obama said.

What should disturb us even more is that prisoners have become a commodity, thanks to the growing relationship between private prisons and state governments. The states that go into business with for-profit prisons sign contracts that essentially agree to maintain quotas on ...